


What Do You Do...?

by Grimpotato



Series: Strangers in the Dark [3]
Category: Warcraft - All Media Types, Warcraft III, World of Warcraft
Genre: Alternate Universe - Noir, F/F, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-20
Updated: 2020-05-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:42:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24290758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Grimpotato/pseuds/Grimpotato
Summary: "You really have no idea do you?" She sounded more amused than upset."No idea of what?"Sylvanas looked thoughtful for a moment and then pushed herself up. "That's for you to find out," she murmured playfully against my lips and slipped away before I could even attempt to deepen the kiss.OrJaina FINALLY finds out Sylvanas's secret (and Sylvanas discovers Jaina's).(Takes Place After "Talk Dirty To Me" and before "I Like the Way".)
Relationships: Jaina Proudmoore/Sylvanas Windrunner
Series: Strangers in the Dark [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1429162
Comments: 10
Kudos: 76





	What Do You Do...?

**Author's Note:**

> Gods, has it already been 2 months since I last posted anything? I'm so sorry. 
> 
> Anyway. Not a lot of sexiness this segment but some backstory for our ladies. 
> 
> This was a hard segment to write but I hope you guys liked it anyway.
> 
> Thanks to [Slackergami](https://slackergami.tumblr.com/) into bullying me into finishing this.

Sylvanas was humming to herself as we laid in the dark with the sheets tangled around us. The bedroom fan spun lazily about above us, moving just enough air to cool the drying sweat on my skin. I turned over onto my side and found her looking back at me. We smiled at each other and I reached over to run my fingertips along one of the dark bruises I left on her shoulder. Her skin was warm and dry and something about that bothered me. Maybe it was because I was still covered in sweat and she wasn't or maybe it was because she was warm in the way a rock might be warm if left in the sun for too long.

"It's strange," I said quietly. "I always thought blood elves ran hot."

"Hmmm?" Sylvanas stopped her humming. "What do you mean?"

"When I first saw you, I thought you were a night elf but, no offense, you're a bit too short for one. Then I thought maybe you were a blood elf using a glamour to change your looks."

Sylvanas laughed softly, "No offense taken." She gathered a pillow into her arms and rested her chin on top of it, "And what do you think of me now?"

I frowned slightly, letting my fingers trail over the rounded curve of her shoulder. "Now I'm not so sure. I've encountered my share of night elves and blood elves both. None of them ever start off feeling so.. cold. So I'm a bit stumped."

That made Sylvanas laugh and she inched closer towards me until we were practically touching. "You really have no idea do you?" She sounded more amused than upset.

"No idea of what?"

Sylvanas looked thoughtful for a moment and then pushed herself up. I was momentarily distracted by the sudden reveal of a pair of well shaped naked breasts. My knuckles brushed past them as my hand fell from her shoulder. She rolled me onto my back and leaned over to kiss me lightly. "That's for you to find out," she murmured playfully against my lips and slipped away before I could even attempt to deepen the kiss.

I whined and sat up as she slipped naked out of my bed and started searching for her clothes. "What do you mean for me to find out? What aren't you telling me Sylvanas?"

She laughed as she slipped on her skirt and blouse, opting to shove her underwear into her purse. "You're a detective and a mage Proudmoore. I'm sure you'll figure it out." She walked over to me and gave me another longer, deeper, kiss; the kind that left me breathless and wanting more. "I'll see you at the club?"

"Uh..." I was panting and feeling slightly dazed. "Uh yeah.. sure..."

She hummed in self-satisfaction. "Good. Thank you for the good time Proudmoore." She wiggled her fingers at me as she made her way to the door. "Shorel'aran."

* * *

Sylvanas's words haunted me for days. I was clearly missing something, something that she thought I knew all along. I just couldn't wrap my head around what. I decided to write down the things about her that I knew were true or at least I thought were true.

First, she was an elf. That much was obvious given the glow of her eyes and the length of her ears. Most likely a tall blood elf given her pale cornsilk colored hair and height but I couldn't discount the possibility that she was half blood elf and half night elf.

Second, she was always cold in a very physical way. While she never failed to warm up when exposed to enough heat, I noticed that she could never quite reach the same temperature as actual body heat.

Third, she never seemed to eat anything except raw red meat.

Lastly, there were the scars that she always tried to keep hidden, even when we were having sex, and the strange markings under her eyes. The markings were probably tattoos. Night elves had a habit of getting dark tattoos around their eyes. It was an old cultural holdover but hers didn't look anything like the ones night elves usually wore. If anything, they reminded me of tear tracks.

Curiouser and Curiouser.

I took my notes to the New Lordaeron Public Library and started my research. It was slow going but I found a few promising books and a couple interesting leads. Now it was just a matter of narrowing down those leads.

* * *

"You're one of the darkfallen."

Sylvanas stopped kissing my navel and looked up. "Pardon?"

I grunted and pushed myself up by my elbows so I could look down at her properly. I was momentarily distracted by the sight of her crouched between my spread legs, hands cradling my hips but I pushed forward. "I figured it out. You're one of the darkfallen. I think uh.. The Thalassian term is San'layn?"

I knew I mangled the word when I saw her wince but it didn't stop her from giving me an incredulous stare. "You..." She pushed herself back up to her knees and crawled towards me with a soft laugh, "You just stopped me from going down on you to tell me that you think I'm a vampyr."

"Well when you put it that way," I mumbled as I felt heat rise to my cheeks. "The timing is a little weird. But I still stand by my statement. It's the only answer that makes sense."

"Oh?" Sylvanas straddled my lap and wrapped her arms around my neck. I had to suppress a shiver when she leaned in close to kiss my ear. "Then please, continue. How am I one of the San'layn?"

"Well um..." I tried to think of all the research I had done in the past couple weeks and the pages of notes I had taken but Sylvanas made it difficult to remember when she licked the shell of my ear. "Um.. Well they're undead, which means you know.. Their bodies tend to take on the same temperature as the environment around them. You do too. You um.. Warm up when under the spotlight for too long or um, we've been.." I gestured to how she was pressed up against me.

The gesture made her laugh and she kissed the tip of my nose. "When we're fucking. You know, you're surprisingly shy when it comes to talking about sex. It's rather endearing. But go on. What other traits do you think I share with those bloodsuckers."

The heat in my cheeks spread and I knew I was probably as red as a tomato. "That's.. You're..! Anyway! The books say they have ashy blue skin due to the lack of blood circulation and you know... The whole undead curse thing going on. Plus the need to consume blood to survive."

Sylvanas hummed as she started nipping along my jaw. "But you've never actually seen me drink blood have you?"

I shivered when her fangs dragged across my skin and couldn't help but tip my head to the side to give her better access to my neck. "N-no but maybe.. I don't know.. I've only ever seen you eat steak and most of the time it's basically raw."

"But that's not the same as drinking blood." She paused and I could feel her breath brush against my skin as she nuzzled against my pulse point. "Unless this is your way of asking me to drink your blood?"

A sudden flash of heat surged through me at the thought of her fangs sinking deep into my neck and I felt her lips curl against me. "Would you like that Proudmoore?" She purred, "Would you like me to sink my fangs into your pretty little neck and suck the blood straight from your veins?"

I shuddered and shook my head violently to banish the thought from my head. "N-no! No! I mean.. Unless you need..?"

I felt her laugh against me before she gave my neck a light playful bite. "I don't need to drink blood to survive. In fact, going around and drinking blood isn't something that excites me. Of course, I'm willing to make an exception for you."

"I um.. I mean I like it when you bite me but um... N-no.. ."

Sylvanas found another spot and bit a little harder; hard enough for me to feel the points of her fangs dig into my neck but not nearly enough to draw blood. "Are you sure? Because I can smell how turned on you are by the mere mention of me sinking my fangs into you."

I swallowed. "Oh Tides. I think.. I think I'd like to keep my blood where it is, that is inside me, for now but thank you."

She pulled away from my neck so she could lean in and kiss me lightly. "If you insist." I put my hands on her hips and urged her to rock against me. She responded with slow rolling movements and I tried to let myself forget about fangs and blood but something about our exchange kept nagging me. She said she didn't need blood to survive but all my research said otherwise.

I pulled away from her kiss. "Wait, if you don't need blood to survive, does that mean you're not darkfallen?"

She heaved an exasperated sigh and stopped moving against me. "Really? Still on this? You're lucky I think you're cute. But no, I'm not one of the darkfallen. I like to think that not only am I not a sadist but I also have better fashion sense. To be fair, I'm honestly a little impressed you managed to find enough about them to think I'm one. Most of them were hunted out of existence about eight hundred years ago."

"So.. If you're not darkfallen, then what are you?"

"Clearly still a puzzle." She started to climb off my lap looking half amused and half disappointed.

I blinked and grabbed her wrist. "Wait. We're not done yet. Where are you going?"

Sylvanas stopped and looked over her shoulder, brow raised. "Home of course. Where else? You're obviously too preoccupied for us to keep going. So I'm going to go home and finish up with a toy or two. It won't be as fun as it is with you but it'll get the job done."

"Wait wait. I'm sorry." I pulled her back and she came easily. "I just... It's been bugging me and I thought I had the answer, that's all. I want you to stay."

"Are you sure? I wouldn't want to distract you."

I grinned as I pulled her down onto the bed. "Actually, I think you're the best kind of distraction. Now where were we?"

* * *

Since the Darkfallen angle was a bust, I was back to square one. Well, maybe one and a half. I managed to confirm that she was some kind of undead. A remarkably well preserved member of the undead of course, which only intrigued me more. Most of my experiences with the undead were the shambling kind that the odd necromancer might summon or, very rarely, a lich.

Sylvanas was not a lich or at least, I didn't think she was one. She didn't behave like any lich I'd ever met. Almost all of them had outsized egos and talked like radio villains. I once encountered one that went as far as lifting lines wholesale from their favorite dramas. So no, I didn't think she was a lich.

With the local library dried up, I fell back on my usual techniques when dealing with a new client or target; looking into their background.

Some basic inquiries revealed that she lived in and owned the top floor of a fancy blood elf operated building on the north side of the town. It was the kind of building one might expect a lady of society to live in, except Sylvanas wasn't the kind taken with entertaining too much. She did have several investments linked to half a dozen successful small businesses across town and a few outside of town, not to mention the usual kinds of trusts, funds and stocks that someone with money would have. Digging a little deeper, I also found money flowing to a few charities and at least one orphanage for those abandoned by war. The accounts belonged to one Lindsay Ravensun but the money from the accounts came from Sylvanas, which was unsurprising. She must have thought she was clever for using an anagram of her own name to hide her charity work.

Sylvanas Windrunner was, in a word, loaded. I found it interesting that she would try to hide her charity work behind a fake name but that wasn't what I was looking for. I needed something more esoteric.

On a whim, I sent a letter to my old adviser at Dalaran University. Modera was something of a Blood Elven history buff, which was unsurprising given the roles the Blood Elves, and the High Elves before then, had in the study of magic. If anyone would know anything about mysterious undead elves, it would be her.

Her reply came in the mail about three weeks later in the form of a sizable package. Inside the box was a collection of books. Most of them were history books, old ones, that covered the fall of Silvermoon and the transition of High Elves to Blood Elves. She even included a short little note wishing me luck with my research and that my answer was in these books along with a warning to be careful as these were all rare books and she needed them back in the same condition I received them in. She probably already figured out the truth and wanted me to find it for myself. This didn't surprise me. She used to do this to me back when I was one of her students; always leading me to the answers but never giving them to me outright.

Fortunately I enjoyed research and had time on my hands.

* * *

The books definitely had the answer but it wasn't what I was expecting. It all seemed pretty traumatic really and I wasn't even sure how to broach the subject. So I kept the information to myself for a good week and a half before Sylvanas ended up being the one to break the ice. It was her day off and we decided to meet up for supper at 7 at the Tender Hoof. We talked about normal things for a bit, my recent cases, new gossip from the club. We'd taken sharing some dessert towards the end of our meal and I had just dug into the slice of cherry pie when Sylvanas brought it up.

"Made any headway in figuring me out Proudmoore?" She had a particular lilt in her voice; the one she liked to use when she was getting ready to tease me about something. She must have thought I hadn't figured it out yet and to be fair, I probably wouldn't have if I hadn't had help from a pretty unlikely source. The real question was, did she actually want me to know.

I bought myself some time by taking the bite of pie, puckering my lips at the tartness of the cherries. I thought about lying to her, telling her no and letting the knowledge stay my secret but something told me that would be wrong. Besides, while I was good at keeping secrets I knew that she'd find out eventually. Best to rip that bandaid off, just maybe not in public.

"Let's just say I found a few interesting things and we can talk about it later? Say somewhere more private?"

The smile on her lips faded and her ears tilted back in a way that screamed caution. "I see. Shall we settle the check then?"

"Yeah sure."

We both left a decent tip for the waitress and headed out into the night. The sun had set while we were eating, so the sky was a dark purple that bled into inky blackness. The streets were still busy as people went about their after work lives. Some looked like they were heading home after a dinner date while others were just getting started, gearing up for another night of drinking and dancing. As for me, I took Sylvanas by the hand and squeezed it. "Let's take a walk. There's a quiet little park not far from here. Should be pretty empty about now."

Sylvanas seemed to think it over and then nodded, giving my hand a squeeze back before sliding it up my arm to curl around my bicep. "Lead the way Proudmoore."

We walked silently, arm in arm, the handful of city blocks it took to get to the park. As I predicted, it was mostly empty. I saw maybe two couples at most going on their own little stroll but we gave them a wide berth as I guided us towards a different, less used path. The lamps were further apart in this part of the park on account of there being more trees and no playground. The air felt heavy, like I was wading against an invisible current. When the silence became unbearable, I took a deep breath and sighed. "So you're a banshee."

Sylvanas paused just long enough that she ended up half a step behind me. I looked at her and she looked back at me with the same wary look from the diner. "I am," she said after a moment of silence.

"Not just any banshee either but the one known as the Banshee Queen."

I watched as the glamour she used to make her skin look smooth waver and then fade, leaving behind the dark marks that trailed from her eyes all the way down her cheeks. I watched her laugh, a soft humorless sound that echoed unnaturally in the still air. "I haven't heard that title in centuries." She looked at me then, her lips quirked in a bitter facsimile of a smile, "It's hard to be a queen when your kingdom is naught but dust and ruin; a long forgotten memory." She paused, "If you know that much, then do you know what happened?"

I nodded, trying to swallow past the lump in my throat. "The broad strokes of it. You fell at the gates of Silvermoon trying to stop the man who would become known as the Lich King. He raised you as a banshee and turned you against your own people. You broke free of his influence eventually but it was already too late for Silvermoon. The city fell and what few high elves remained renamed themselves as blood elves and scattered across Azeroth looking for refuge."

"Impressive."

I shrugged, trying my best to look nonchalant even as my every instinct told me to run, and guided Sylvanas to a nearby park bench. "I had some help from an old friend. She's something of an expert on ancient High Elven history. As soon as I mentioned your name, she seemed to know where to look."

Sylvanas followed me quietly to the bench and smoothed out her skirt before sitting down. I could feel something rising around her, something that made the hairs on the back of my neck start to rise; probably the necrotic power that kept her moving. "You probably know then," she said in a tight voice, "about me, about the blood on my hands, the atrocities I committed while under the control of that man." The red glow of her eyes, normally so dull that I could see her pale silver-grey irises, burned like a signal flare in the night sky and the edges of her form were starting to blur ever so slightly, as if her body was made of shadow and willpower and willpower was losing. It made me wonder what sort of powers Sylvanas had outside the odd overtone in her voice and the fact that she was undead.

I started drawing the runes for an arcane barrier. I wasn't sure if I could get one up before she released whatever power she was building but I wasn't taking any chances.

She must have sensed the rise of my own magic to counteract hers because she stopped and with visible effort, brought her powers back under control. The shadows still writhed around her, crawling just above her skin but it didn't escalate. She was holding herself in, for now.

Still, I held on to the barrier and waited three counts before speaking.

"I don't know all the details but I know enough. I know that he ran you through with his blade and enslaved your soul to do his dirty work."

"That man," she spat like her words were caustic acid, "ripped my soul from the afterlife and brought me back. He paraded my banshee form through the streets of Silvermoon even as his Scourge razed the city to the ground, slaughtering hundreds in their wake. He locked my body away in an iron coffin." Her lips curled into a snarl. "I do not know what he intended to do with it but I'm certain it was for nothing good. It took me ages to break free of his control and he had the audacity to die by the hands of another."

I listened in silence, letting Sylvanas seethe. Her rage was justified. The fall of Arthas Menethil and his rise as the Lich King was the stuff of legend; the kind of story that writers used as a warning against hubris. Even the Proudmoores had our own ties to his story. One of my ancestors, my namesake, was supposedly once engaged to him, only for the engagement to be broken off when Menethil murdered his own father.

"He once told me that the Fall of Silvermoon was my fault," she snarled and something in her voice made my very bones vibrate and caused a slight ringing in my ear. Another one of her powers? I channeled the mana from the half-formed barrier to a dampening spell and the vibration and the ringing lessened. "That he had only intended on marching to the Sunwell but decided raze my city and murder my people because I had defied him in life."

Her voice rose pitch and volume, enough that I was forced to edge away from Sylvanas towards the end of the bench. "Do you know why I hide behind glamours and illusion magics Proudmoore?" She gestured angrily towards her face. "Because this is not makeup, not tattoos. These are the burned remains of the tears I shed as I was forced to watch his undead horde cut my people down before he ran that accursed sword through me! There are days when looking at myself in the mirror is like looking at the ruins of my people, my life, me! He's been dead for centuries and yet, I still must bear the marks of his own selfishness!"

I swear I could see the air ripple as her shout passed around me. The dampening spell absorbed the bulk of her shout but the magically enhanced air still tore at the sleeves of my jacket and shirt until only tatters remained. When the ringing in my ears finally died away, Sylvanas was panting heavily and looking away from me; not in shame but in immeasurable grief.

I knew that look. I had worn it many times myself in the past and still did when the nights grew long and I was left to my own thoughts for too long. I looked down at my clothes and mentally sighed. The shirt and jacket were ruined; a small sacrifice for what I just witnessed. I started to unbutton my shirt, thankful I was wearing an undershirt tonight.

Sylvanas must have caught my movement out of the corner of her eye because she had turned her head to look at me. She took in the state of my clothes and some of the grief faded. "I'll buy you a new suit," she murmured, apologetic and hoarse.

I shook my head. "Don't worry about it. I didn't like the jacket much anyway. It never fit right. Only got it because it was cheap."

"Still..."

I smiled gently at her. "It's fine, really," I said as I shrugged out of my jacket. It took me a moment to work the suspenders off my shoulders and another to take my shirt off so I could drape it over the back of the park bench. Fortunately, summer nights in New Lordaeron were warm enough that the lack of clothing didn't bother me at all. Unfortunately that meant bared arms and bared arms meant showing off the web of healed burn scars that covered my arms.

On any other night, I might have tried to hide them or pray that Sylvanas was too preoccupied with other things to pay any attention to them but tonight, I let her see. I had dragged the truth of her scars to light. Maybe it was time to repay the favor. I didn't withdraw when she took my hand into hers and traced my scars.

"Do you want to know about them?"

Sylvanas looked down and then back at me. The grief was still there in her eyes but the uncertainty had returned. "Not if you don't me want to."

"It's only fair."

"Fuck fairness," Sylvanas snarled. "Life isn't fair." She started to pull away again. I reached out to her and held fast, stopping her from pulling away.

"You're right. Life isn't fair but that doesn't mean we can't try."

She looked down at my arms again and ran a finger along the middle of my forearm. She visibly softened. "I had wondered..."

"They're the reason why I came to New Lordaeron."

Sylvanas looked at me, ears pinned back and eyes narrowed but she said nothing, merely waiting for me to continue.

I swallowed as I recalled the day the air caught fire and my life was changed forever. "I wasn't always a private detective. I wanted to be a mage, a proper one. I even managed to get into Dalaran University but my father... He had other ideas. He let me attend Dalaran but only if I promised to enlist in the Kul Tiras Navy after graduation." I sighed, wondering what my life would be like if I had resisted my father and became a mage. Would I be happy? Content? It was something I dreamed about often but Sylvanas wasn't here for that. She was looking at me curiously, as if wondering why someone who had such aspirations would join the navy. So I pressed on.

"The navy is a big part of the Proudmoore heritage you see. My father was the Grand Admiral of the entire Kul Tiran fleet as was his father and his father before him and many of our ancestors before him. My mother's a read admiral and even my brothers enlisted. I was the black sheep and my father couldn't have that."

It was my turn to look away. Instead of the woods before us, I saw a forest of masts on the open sea. "Would you believe me if I said I was good at it? I'm sure my father pulled a few strings to make things easier for me but I managed to make it to the rank of Commander mostly on my own. I even earned enough commendations that they decided to let me command my own ship. The LAS Theramore. She was beautiful. A top of the line destroyer kitted out with the best Kul Tiras had to offer, including a new experimental magitech engine." I felt a smile form as I remembered the day my father brought me out to the dock to show her to me for the first time. His voice trembled with pride when he told me that she was mine to crew and command. His hands couldn't stop shaking as he presented me the gnomish made watch that rested around my wrist.

"She sounds wonderful," Sylvanas murmured.

"She was," I sighed wistfully. "She was originally commissioned for Lord Stormsong's son, a powerful tidesage in his own right but my father managed to convince the rest of the brass that a ship powered by the arcane could only be captained by an arcane mage and since I was the only trained arcane mage in the entire navy... I guess that was his way of making it up to me for the whole university thing."

"So what happened?"

I shook my head, taking a moment to clear it. "Training exercise. We were performing joint maneuvers with the Stormwind and Zandalori navies and all the commanding officers were gathered on shore for our morning briefing. The crew themselves were on the other side of the harbor prepping their ships and doing basic drills. The COs would be transported to their respective ships by gig after the meeting. My father happened to be there that day too. Since he was only supposed to be observing, he declined the join the briefing and went to make himself useful on the Theramore instead."

I took in a deep shuddering breath, closing my eyes as the memories washed over me. I could feel the heat of the explosion, the skin on my arms burning and blistering as the excess mana shredded my arcane barrier and how my entire body felt like a sack of live wires as I tried to channel as much of the mana into and through me.

"Jaina?" The odd overtone of Sylvanas's voice cut through the screams that echoed in my head and my eyes opened with a jolt. She was holding tightly to both of my wrists now, concern replacing the grief in her eyes. "You don't have to..."

I shook my head, cutting her off. "No. I want you to know Sylvanas. You, more than anyone, deserve to know what happened, why I'm like this." I took a deep breath, grounding myself in Sylvanas's cool touch. "A group of cultists from Stormwind managed to assume the identity of a few midshipmen and a lieutenant. Using their connections, they swapped out some of the dummy missiles for live ones. My father was the first to notice something was amiss. The ship had pulled away from the rest and started to turn back towards the harbor. He took command of the Theramore and followed after them. Our best guess is they panicked and instead of firing on their intended target, the harbor offices where all the COs were, they aimed at the Theramore instead.

"Rhonin Redhair, a friend of mine from my university days, was on board too. I brought him in as soon as I found out about the magitech engine. The brass had a fit about it but there was no one better than Rhonin when it came to magitech. He agreed to work as a consultant and it's only because of him and my father that the casualties weren't worse that day." I glanced sideways at Sylvanas. "Do you know anything about mana bombs?"

"Not much I'm afraid, just that they are very difficult to maintain and very destructive."

"That's pretty much all there is to them. They're just things of raw mana with a detonator. One of the missiles the cultists fired happened to be one tipped with a mana bomb. No one's sure how they managed to sneak one onboard but I suspect it's because someone way up in Stormwind was calling the shots." My mouth settled into a grimace. "Anyway, Rhonin was a damn good mage and erected an arcane shield as soon as he realized what was coming for them. Even managed to reroute the engine's mana output to fuel the spell right before the bomb exploded. Because of that, he was able to contain most of the explosion. If he hadn't, the entire harbor would have been leveled. As it was, there was still enough residual energy left that it tore through my own shielding spell. "

I pulled my wrist away from Sylvanas's gentle grip and rubbed my thumb over the scarred skin on the back of my forearm. "There was just so much free mana left and without my shielding spell... Well I was desperate to save the lives of as many people as I could. So I channeled as much of that mana into me as I could and dumped it back out into the ocean as waves of ice and pillars of fire. When it was all over... All that was left of the Theramore and her crew was a twisted metal hull and me." My eyes burned with tears. "The exposure to so much mana bleached most of my hair silver." I fingered the golden strands mixed in with the silver in my braid, "This is all that's left of my original hair color. The burns are from when I tried to shield my face. "I gave Sylvanas a watery rueful smile at that. "So at least I got that going for me huh?"

Sylvanas smiled back and reached out for my hands again, this time lifting the knuckles to her lips so she could kiss the backs of them. "At least you have that. So what happened to the cultists?" Her voice was soft, so soft that I could barely hear the echo in her voice.

I found myself missing it.

"They caught the bastards, shipped them back to Stormwind. I heard they got the death sentence but still... the damage was done. Kul Tiras was missing a Grand Admiral, I lost a father and my mother could barely look me in the eye. So I left Kul Tiras. Couldn't stand all the looks people gave me, like that weird mix of pity and scorn. Pity because I was the sole survivor of the LAS Theramore and scorn because I was the captain and didn't go down with her."

My hands closed around Sylvanas's, gripping onto them tightly in my bitterness. Her ears flickered in response but she didn't pull away. We sat there in that park for a long time in silence, clinging to each other like survivors discovering each other after a shipwreck and we were survivors. We had both survived, by a certain definition of the word, horrific acts of violence with the scars to show for it and we found each other because of them. I didn't know about Sylvanas, but this was the first time I had told my story to someone and I didn't feel emptier for in. In fact, I felt fuller, more connected with her in this moment than with anyone else since I left Kul Tiras years ago.

A gust of wind blew past us, pulling me back to the present and I looked up. The moon was fairly high but not high enough for me to want to call it a night. Sylvanas was looking at me curiously, as if asking 'what next' with her eyes. So I stood up and pulled her up with me. "I don't think I'm quite ready to end this night just yet. Would you like to go get drunk with me?"

Sylvanas looked thoughtful and smiled back, "You know what? I think I would."

"Excellent. I know a bar down by the docks. It's not like the Rose. No one asks any questions and everything's cheap and strong enough to make your head spin."

Sylvanas laughed, muted but only slightly forced, "I'd like to see you try."

"To make your head spin?"

"Mmmm."

"Well, let's get to it."

* * *

When I woke up, it was with the second worst headache of my life and a stinging pain in my right hand. I took a quick bleary-eyed look around. Well, at least I made it to my bedroom this time. I took a quick glance under the sheets and saw that I was still wearing pants. That was always a good sign. I was a bit more worried about the bruised knuckles on my right hand. I yawned and tried to remember how I ended up in this state. There was the hazy memory of cool soft fingers brushing against my ankles as they tugged off my shoes and socks; firm hands that pushed me down onto the bed and a soothing sultry voice murmuring "Next time" in my ear.

I rubbed my eyes with the back of my good hand and took another look around.

Someone had left a glass of water, some painkillers and a note. I took the pills first, chasing them down with the water. I reached for the note but only after I washed the taste of dry cotton out of my mouth.

 _Jaina_ , the letter began. _I hope you're not too hungover when you read this. Honestly, I'm a bit impressed. I've never seen anyone drink quite as much as you did last night and stay standing. Even more impressive was the right hook you used to knock out that lout at the bar on my behalf. I was a bit worried that his friends were going to jump you but the bartender got involved before that happened. Next time, know that I am more than capable of handling myself in those sorts of situations but I appreciate the sentiment. I will also say that while you have a lovely singing voice and as endearing as it was hearing you serenade me with sea shanties, we really should work on expanding your repertoire of songs. I'll make sure to put together an appropriate list of Elven drinking songs for your pleasure next time._

_Lastly, I wanted to thank you for last night. While I have had centuries to come to terms with my fate, it is good to know that there is at least one other person alive in this world who knows the truth. Also, thank you for sharing your story with me. I will not judge you on your past. Belore knows there's enough blood on my hands that any commentary from me would only come across as hypocritical. Just know that your past is safe with me as I hope mine is safe with you._

_Take care of yourself darling. I hope to see you at the Golden Rose, if not tonight, then soon._

_-Sylvanas_

_PS: So what DOES one do with a drunken sailor aside from put her to bed?_

I laughed at the last line. Clearly the drunk version of myself didn't manage to get past the first round of choruses. I read the letter again as I headed to my dresser to pull out a small box. I folded the bit of paper into quarters before putting it in the box on top of my old Commander's patch. I let my fingers brush lightly over the embroidered gold strips on top of a field of blue and waited for the feelings of grief and guilt to consume me. Instead, there was only the bittersweet memory of my crew as they welcomed me aboard the ship for the first time and my father standing on the dock with the biggest grin I'd ever seen.

The guilt of not going down with the Theramore would always stay with me just as the fall of Silvermoon would stay with Sylvanas, but maybe we didn't have to carry those feelings of guilt alone anymore.

It was a nice thought.


End file.
